8:42 Syrian troops mounted an assault on rebels near Damascus on Thursday, closing off the road to the airport amid a widespread telecommunications outage, as the US weighed what further help it can give the rebels.

8:24 Delegates from more than 60 countries gathered in Tokyo on Friday, seeking to ramp up pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime as the US moved towards recognizing the newly-unified opposition as true leaders of Syria.

6:55 Rebel Syrian fighters destroyed three Syrian Army tanks in the vicinity of the Damascus airport, activists said.

1250 GMT: The United Nations refugee agency has said conditions in Homs are desperate, with an assessment team finding half the city's hospitals shut down and "severe shortages of basic supplies ranging from medicine to blankets, winter clothes and children's shoes".

Spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said there are 250,000 people displaced in and around the city with thousands in unheated communal shelters and many children unable to attend school.

Fleming said the agency delivered nine trucks of quilts, blankets, mattresses and other supplies and more will be sent soon.

Fleming also said that Syrians have been shot at as they fled to Jordan.

Syrian refugees are being shot at as they flee to neighbouring Jordan and many have to be treated in hospital on arrival, the United Nations said on Friday.

In its latest briefing on the Syria crisis, the UN refugee agency also said 250,000 people were living in temporary shelters in the flashpoint city of Homs, without adequate food, clothing or medicine as winter added to the misery of civil war.

"We have received very disturbing reports from Syrian refugees in Jordan who say they were targeted as they were fleeing.

LATTAKIA, Syria — With coffins stacking up at the airport in Syria’s Alawite heartland, and funerals now a daily routine for its mountain villagers, support is fraying among the community on which the Syrian regime depends.

15:04 Syria’s Friday death toll increased to 44 people, most of them killed in Damascus and Aleppo, Al-Jazeera quoted activists as saying.

12:09 Fighting between rebels and troops raged around Damascus airport through the night, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday, adding that two airport workers died when a shell smashed into a bus.

1359 GMT: The regime has pulled out of the key oil fields east of Mayadin, near the border with Iraq (map). Al Jazeera reports:

Syrian troops withdrew from Omar oil field, one of the last regime positions east of Deir Ezzor city near the Iraqi border, a watchdog said Friday, adding that rebels now control the country's major fields.

"Government troops pulled back on Thursday from the Omar oil field north of the town of Mayadeen after having lost the Conoco gas reserve on November 27," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The insurgents took control of an oil field for the first time on November 4 when they overran Al-Ward, the most important in the province, the Observatory said.

After also losing control of Al-Jofra field also in November, the army now controls not more than five fields, all located to the west of Deir Ezzor city, the watchdog said.

This is significant for three reasons. First, the regime has now lost the majority of their oil fields, to say nothing of the trade routes they were using to smuggle the oil out. The financial implications are obvious, but if this conflict drags on the regime will also need the oil to power generators, power plants, tanks and other vehicles.

The second reason - the insurgents have already started to sell oil through Iraq and, by some accounts, Turkey. This influx of money will help fuel the revolution, as well as potentially provide revenue to buy more weapons. Speaking of weapons, many of the weapons in the east have already been purchased from Iraq, supplementing the weapons captured from the regime. This is not all about weapons, though. The insurgents, and the people under their care, need food, medicine, and other supplies - to say nothing of fuel for their own generators as winter threatens those affected by this crisis.

The last reason why this is important is that it is yet more confirmation of the regime's incredibly weak military standing in the east. The oil fields, and the Deir Ez Zor airport, are the remaining key locations in regime possession in this province, so if these oil fields have been abandoned it means that Assad's remaining forces know they are in a tactically unwinnable situation.

This was also one of the few locations south of Deir Ez Zor city that remained in regime hands. It seems the stage is now set for the insurgent forces to strike further north.

Once Deir Ez Zor falls, the insurgency will have uncontested access to hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of square kilometers of territory. With no significant threat to the east, the insurgents will be able to move to other locations. Their most likely path would bring them northwest, down the road that travels through Al Raqqag and on to Aleppo. If this road falls to insurgents, the Hassakaha governorate would be completely cut off from the rest of Syria, allowing the insurgents to quickly take that area as well.